Or bite me. Whichever comes first.
But it didn't bite him, and if there had been something there, it didn't touch him again. He waded on, watching for the telltale, pale blue of the tiny, odorless flowers on their long stems, poking up among the reeds. As long as he kept them in sight, he would be on the path the hertasi had built of stone and sand amid the mud of the swamp. There were always two plants, one marking each side of the path. The idea was to stop between each pair and look for the next; while the path itself twisted among the reeds and muck, it was a straight line from one pair of plants to the next. And there were false trails laid; it wasn't a good idea to break away from the set path and take what looked like a more direct route, or a drier one; the direct route generally ended in a bog, and the "dry" one always ended in a patch of quicksand or a sinkhole.
Once again he was sweating like a panicked dyheli, and that attracted other denizens of the swamp. Below the water all might be peaceful, but the hertasi could do nothing about the insects above. Darkwind had rubbed himself with pungent weeds to enhance his race's natural resistance to insects, but blackflies still buzzed about his eyes, and several nameless, nearly invisible fliers had already feasted on his arms by the time he reached dry land again.
There was no warning; the ruins simply began, and the marsh ended.
Darkwind suspected that the marsh had once been a large lake, possibly artificial, and the ruins marked a small settlement or trading village, or even a guard post, built on its shore. If whatever cataclysm had created the Plains had not altered the flow of watercourses hereabouts, he would have been very surprised-and after that, it would have been logical for the lake to silt up and become a swamp. He climbed up on the stones at the edge of the swamp, slapping at persistent insects, vowing silently to take the long way around, on his return.
He looked up to make sure of Vree, and found the bondbird soaring overhead, effortlessly, in the cloud-dotted sky.
Not for the first time, he wished for wings of his own.
"And what would you do with them, little one?" asked a humor-filled mind-voice. "How would you hide and creep, and come unseen upon your enemies, hmm?"
"the same way you do, you old myth," he replied. "From above."
"Good answer," replied Treyvan, and the gryphon dove down out of the sun, to land gracefully on a toppled menhir in a thunderous flurry of backwinging, driving up the dust around him and forcing Darkwind to protect his eyes with his hand until the gryphon had alighted.
"Sssso, what brings you to our humble abode?" Treyvan asked genially, somehow managing to do what the tervardi could not , and force human speech from his massive beak.
"I need advice, and maybe help," Darkwind told him, feeling as small as the hertasi as he looked up at the perching gryphon. Those handclaws, for instance, were half again as wide and long as his own strong hands, and their tips were sheathed in talons as sharp and black as obsidian.
Treyvan jumped down from the stone, and his claws clenched and released reflexively as the gryphon changed its position before him, absentmindedly digging inch-deep furrows into the packed earth.
"Advissse we will alwayss have forrr you, featherlessss sson. Advissse you will take? That iss up to you," Treyvan smiled, gold-tinged crest raising a little in mirth. "Help we will alwaysss give if we can, wanted orrr not.
Darkwind smiled, and stepped forward to grasp the leading edge of the great gryphon's folded wing, and leaned in to run a hand through the spicy-scented neck feathers, seemingly unending in their depth.
"Thank you. Where is Hydona?"
"Sssearrrching for nessst-lining, I would guess." Treyvan let a trace of his pride show through, fluffing his chest feathers and raising his tail-tip.
"So soon? When... when will you make the flight?
"Sssoon, sssoon. You will be able to tellll. Treyvan chuckled at Darkwind's blush, then half-closed his eyes, and Darkwind felt the wing-muscles under his hand relax.
It was easy-very easy-to fall under the hypnotic aura of the gryphon, a state of dreamy relaxation brought on by the feel of the soft, silky feathers, the faintly sweet scent, the deep-rumble of Treyvan's faint purr.
It was the gryphon himself who broke the spell.
"You have need of usss, Darrrkwind," he reminded the scout. The muscles in the wing retensed, and he stood, wings tucked to his side under panels of feathers. "Let usss go to Hydonaaa." He turned and paced regally on a path winding deeper into the ruins.
Darkwind had to hurry to keep up with his companion's ground-eating strides.
The gryphons had arrived here, in these ruins, literally out of the sky one day, when Darkwind was seven or eight. He'd claimed these ruins-then, well within the safe boundaries of k'sheyna territory-as his own solitary playground. There was magic here, a half-dozen ley-lines and a node, but the mages had decreed it safe; tame and unlikely to cause any problems. It was a good place to play, and imagine mysteries to be solved, monsters to conquer, magics to learn.
Watching Treyvan's switching tail, he recalled that day vividly.
He had rounded a corner, the Great Mage investigating possibly dangerous territory and about to encounter a Fearsome Monster, when he encountered a real one.
He had literally walked into Treyvan, who had been watching his antics with some amusement, he later learned. All he knew at the time was that he had turned a corner to find himself face-to-face with-Legs.
Very large legs, ending in very, very large claws. His stunned gaze had traveled upward; up the furry legs, to the transition between fur and feathers, to the feather-covered neck, to the beak.
The very, very, very large, sharp, and wickedly hooked beak.
The beak had opened; it seemed as large as a cave.
"Grrr," Treyvan had said.
Darkwind had turned into a small whirlwind of rapidly pumping arms and legs, heading for the safe-haven of the Vale, and certain, with the surety of a terrified eight-year-old, that he was not going to make it.
Somehow he had; somehow he escaped being pounced on and eaten whole. He had burst into the ekele, babbling of monsters, hundreds, thousands of them, in the ruins. Since he had never been known to lie, his mother and father had set up the alarm, and a small army of fighters and mages had descended on a very surprised---and slightly contrite-pair of gryphons.
Fortunately for all concerned, gryphons were on the list of "friendly, though we have never seen one" creatures all Tayledras learned of some time in their teens. Treyvan apologized, and explained that he and Hydona were an advance party, intending to discover if these lands were safe to live and breed in. They offered their help in guarding k'sheyna in return for the use of the ruins as a nesting ground. The Elders had readily agreed; help as large and formidable as the gryphons was never to be disdained. A bargain was struck, and the party returned home.
But all Darkwind knew was that he was huddling in his parent's ekele, his knife clutched in his hand, waiting to find out if the monsters were descending on his home.
Until his parents returned: unbattered, unbloody, perfectly calm.